Chapter 16

16

Meyra found herself wandering around the inn after she and Daisy left Dylan's b-attic, as she was calling it now. Bentley had helped Dylan make construction paper bats to hang up on her rafters after she'd told him a story about adventurous bat-boy halflings or something. Dylan had hung them up everywhere. Her nephew and Dylan got along really well and had a lot of fun together. Dylan was great with kids.

Meyra had told Dylan and Daisy what had happened back in November. And showed them the ceramic flowers from February. And asked them what they would do in her place.

Dylan had said she would chase that gorgeous man creature to the ends of the earth and demand answers. Daisy had just sighed and said that it was really romantic.

Neither had been much help.

Meyra was still confused.

She wandered down to the vending machines. Most times, she liked homemade food best—she really didn't understand the need for so many chemicals in prepackaged food or anything—and she had just had cake, but maybe something salty would help.

She just wasn't ready to be in her room, thinking. She knew what she would be thinking about, too.

Or rather, who.

Brandt had been watching her almost constantly. For days. Since he had first come out of his suite with his brothers beside him to sit in the lobby with his family. Whenever he could, he had watched her. And she just didn't understand what she should do about him.

She punched in the number for her favorite chips and waited for the vending machine to spit it out. She'd grab an ice cream bar, too, and have Marin put it on her tab when she went by the desk.

"Can't sleep?"

Meyra jerked around at the question. She hadn't even realized someone had come into the basement behind her.

She looked up into the bluest eyes she had ever seen.

"Brandt! I…oh. I'm not sure what I should say to you now. I am very confused."

There was only so much a man could take. He had been waiting for the right time with this woman for years. Of course, six months of that, he'd been practically useless while he recuperated. Then he had to rebuild the strides he'd been making in his business empire before that asshole Jasper Grady had shot him.

But now? Now he was at the point he wanted to be. And she was right there, looking so damned innocent.

The woman was twenty-five years old. She wasn't a child.

And he knew she'd kissed men before. That asshole Calloway Grady, for one. Thoughts of that asshole and the way he'd looked at Meyra the last time he'd been in the damned diner had Brandt doing something he probably would regret.

"Meyra…" He slid one hand into her hair. Beneath the braid. She had the softest, sweetest-smelling hair of any woman he had ever been close to. She tormented him. And she didn't have any idea what she did to him. No idea at all. "You are too much."

"What? Why?" She just stared at him in the low light from the inn. One hand spread over his chest. Taunting him with what he wanted from her. "What exactly are you doing?"

"Damning myself, I'm sure." He just decided to go with it. To do what he had to do. Or he'd never be able to look at himself in the mirror again. "Just let me…"

"Are you…going to kiss me again?"

"Hell, yes, I'm going to kiss you again."

Brandt put his money where his mouth was. He pressed his lips to hers. And kissed her.

Finally. He was back where he belonged.